This would be good news, and I think a possibly important success for Obama’s foreign policy. It was made possible, sadly, not only by the planned assassination of ambassador Chris Stevens, but by his life’s work. He was there for many Libyans, working alongside them in the bitter struggle against Gadhafi, when it counted. It’s also made possible by the people who stormed Ansar-Al-Sharia’s base. This has been a primary goal of Obama’s foreign policy; to isolate and highlight the extremists, the radicals, the Islamists, especially Al Qaeda affiliates and try and find a sweet spot of Muslim sentiment on the ground to push them aside. ‘Moderate’ Muslims may be a chimera in my limited experience, and they may not, but a group of Libyans apparently giving the thugs a run for their money is a good start.
Totten’s new book: Where The West Ends.
Addition:An emailer points out that such hope reveals my hand as a neo-con. Look around at Egypt, the rise of Islamism generally, the gathering threats on the horizon. They are there, dear reader.
Another Addition: Beyond Jimmy Carter, Obama believes he will bridge two worlds. That’s quite a risk for Americans at home and through our foreign policy. This is a bright spot amidst a real mess.
Obama’s still pushing the video-started-the-riots story? Was he really willing to be so nebulous on free speech?
It’s more about the Free Libya group getting tired of the lawlessness rather than Ambassador Stevens.
Yet Another Addition: NY Times has an interview with Morsi. Still ‘optimistic.’ CNN, of all places, releases information from Stevens’ diary after promising the family they wouldn’t, because they thought it pertinent. The NY Times has a piece critical of the administration’s handling of Iraq, where basically, we’d be lucky to get a strong military and strongman leadership.
Why did the Obama administration claim there was more security when there likely wasn’t for Stevens in Libya? Why did it blame the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ video for the attack in Benghazi for so long? Did the administration’s actions during this time potentially put other embassies and other Americans at risk? Did it fail to meet a fundamental defense of the first amendment by trotting out Nakoula to placate the actually rioting Muslims across the Muslim world, and shift the responsibility to Google, and individual American citizens in order to ultimately save Obama’s foreign policy and belief that he can bridge two worlds?
Those are big risks to take. A little explanation would be nice.
Another: MSNBC reports on CNN reporting despite the State Department’s to ‘protect the family.’
Related On This Site: Via Reuters: ‘U.S. Ambassador To Libya Killed In Benghazi Attack’
Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest Online: ‘Obama’s War’…From The WSJ: “Allies Rally To Stop Gadhafi”…From March 27th, 2009 At WhiteHouse.Gov: Remarks By The President On A New Strategy For Afghanistan And Pakistan…From The New Yorker: ‘How Qaddafi Lost Libya’…
Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘Remember Libya?’…A Few Thoughts On Watching Operations In Libya
Is Bernhard Henri-Levy actually influencing U.S. policy decisions..? From New York Magazine: ‘European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator’…Bernhard Henri-Levy At The Daily Beast: ‘A Moral Tipping Point’…Charlie Rose Episode On Libya Featuring Bernhard Henri-Levy, Les Gelb And Others…
“Bumps in the road” is likely to join “ leading from behind ” in the repertoire of Republican criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy, along with the notion that Obama has somehow apologized for America (he hasn’t, but it comes up a lot) and that he is less supportive of Israel than he ought to be. In Romney’s hands, this has come to mean more or less the same thing as not being sufficiently supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu, although, as David Remnick has pointed out , these are not at all the same things. The Republican criticisms of Obama’s relation to the world can be hard to reconcile: he is both too worldly (too willing to bring “European” models into the domestic sphere, too eager to engage, and, in the uglier iterations, simply too foreign and un-American himself) and too naïve—unwilling to take the world by storm and tell it what to do. Romney said that Obama needed a big stick, Teddy Roosevelt-style, and to talk more about the use of force against Iran.